Tag Archives: life

(Un)easyJet, home movies and Mexican waves

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I don’t know. I get rumbles that some people think a) I make this stuff up/embellish it, or b) I actively manipulate some of the (travel) situations I find myself in to create blog fodder.

I don’t. And I wouldn’t.

Take my trip to Milan. Starting from Gatwick departure lounge. A place that still gives me anxiety sweats and prickles. Passengers for Flight Number Schmumber stood obediently under the announcement board from the second the departure gate was expected. I think we all knew easyJet rules about getting to the boarding gate on time. But nothing happened. Half an hour after the flight should have taken off, still nothing. No one moved their eyes from the board. I kept fingering the boarding pass in my bag. Just checking. Then the board changed;

‘Flight Number Schmumber. Gate 23. Gate closed’.

Whoa!

Pandemonium. Trolley cases burning rubber along moving walkways. The less speedy falling foul of the speedy.  Shouts of “Oy!” “Wait!” that couldn’t possibly reach easyJet staff, 15 gates away. At the gate it got a bit ranty, even though the gate wasn’t really closed. The speedy and bog standard boarders were united. The easyJet staff blamed Gatwick, passengers blamed easyJet. Then Italy scored and a Mexican wave rippled through the queue.

Once on the plane things took an unusual turn. I had an aisle seat (essential if possible). A large Italian guy dressed in a black suit and white shirt pitched up and took the middle seat next to me. Glossy mac air and glossy hair. He was Glossy Man. He cranked up his laptop and started watching a movie. Jesus of Nazareth. Without headphones.

‘Ooh.. bit controversial’, I thought. ‘No headphones? In a public type space??’

The sound was low though and other people were chittering away, so I kind of ignored it.

But then Olivia Hussey was replaced by a long, blonde haired woman in what looked like a road movie. Arty, careless shots through a car windscreen, the open road, a broad panorama of desolate scenery. Within a minute, it was over and he clicked on the next film in his itunes libary. Just seconds of footage of the same woman. Doing stuff. Cycling through a forest, walking round a house, dancing on a beach, standing in a car park.

Eh, wha?? Home movies? On a plane? With sound?  I tried not to peek but it was kind of compelling viewing. Maybe because of the seemingly careless ordinariness of the content. Maybe because I’m a sucker for reality TV.  By clip 28 I was creating narratives or imaginaries. Filling in the gaps. She was a government operative missing in action since 2003. Off the Dalmation Coast… She was a lost love, rather than the woman who might be waiting for him at arrivals. He’d lost her through his uncompromising behaviours…

“Ciao!” she shouted at the camera at one point, waving. “Ciao! Arriverderci!” I nearly shouted back.

Then the clips started to appear more haunting or sinister. For no reason. I started to watch them differentIy.

“Ti amo!” I imagined him shouting to her, his voice thick with emotion.

“Leave me alone you glossy stalker you!” she shouted back. “And take your mac air with you. Glossy bastard.”

I was relieved when we landed and she was minimised and turned off. He sped through passport control. I was stuck (as always, in the queue that stopped moving). She might have been waiting in arrivals. I don’t know.

An hour later, still on my journey, I was in the city centre.  Gridlocked in the back of a taxi, surrounded by celebrating Italian football fans. There were more Mexican waves. And an ironing board.

Bonsai trees in the Marriott lobby

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One thing led to another, this afternoon, in the Marriott Denver-Tech-Center hotel lobby.  A baking hot afternoon. A war between suburban hotel shuttle services. I was left waiting for about 45 minutes to get from the conference hotel (on the edge of a 12 lane motorway), to the hotel I was staying at (in the middle of nowhere). A hell hole industrial wasteland of nowhere. I ain’t joking.

I hung out in the lobby which was the size of a small football pitch. Chatting to the ‘bell/concierge’ person every now and again. She was working her socks off trying to negotiate ways out of the hotel for a constant stream of large and small groups of people who wanted to go somewhere.

I watched delegates from the Vision of the American West Bonsai Convention carefully wheel their trees away on luggage trollies, and vaguely regretted not spending more time at their exhibition. Various delegates from the disability conference I was attending, milled around, on foot, in chairs, on scooters, chatting, signing, discussing where to eat that evening. There was a lively, end of the day conference buzz. I met a delegate from Witney who had emailed me months ago. Funny old world and all that.

Three young men came through the revolving doors dressed in US naval uniform. They visibly responded, seeing a small group of conference delegates standing by the entrance. One of them stopped, momentarily and stared. He was given a brief hand squeeze on the shoulder by his colleague. There were the tiniest of half grins, a small cough, then faces were rearranged into studied disinterest.

All in the Marriott lobby. On a baking hot afternoon. That’s all.

Slavery

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“I AM NOT DOING THE DISHWASHER AGAIN. EVER. EVER! IT’S A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY..AND.. AND IT MAKES BOSSY KIDS’ LIVES MISERY..”
“Eh, what’s that LB?”
“Nothing Mum.”
“What are you shouting about?”
“Nothing Mum.”
“It didn’t sound like nothing.”
“Mum?”
“Yes?”
“Mum, what’s slavery Mum?”
“Where people are held against their will and forced to work for the people who hold them.”
“Is slavery a criminal offence Mum?”
“Yes. Why?”
“No reason Mum.”

Progress

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It’s funny when you have a learning disabled child. The whole experience is drenched in so much unnecessary crap, and focus on deficit, that it becomes difficult to disentangle the important bits from the baggage that is thrown at you. It also takes time to step outside of the rigid, inflexible, structure of ‘normal’ child development to accepting the dude you have.

In the early toddler/pre-school days, instead of celebrating the progress LB made, I had a feverish, obsessional focus on what hadn’t happened. I wonder now if there were some thoughtful professionals along the way who tried to point out progress, but were met with a frazzled, semi-hysterical woman who found the fact LB was no longer going quite so crazy ape-shite when I reversed the car less relevant “THAN THE FACT HE AIN’T SPEAKING A WORD YET DESPITE HIS GROMMET OPERATION!!!” All very stressful, distressing and ultimately unproductive.

As years go past, those markers of normal development become more and more meaningless and I chucked em out along the way. I suppose, with hindsight, I wish someone had let me know gently and effectively early on that his would be a different path, with different milestones. I suspect that some professionals thought they were. The paediatrician sort of tried but failed spectacularly with her statement, when he was about three, that we should expect nothing and come back to see her when he reached adolescence to talk about respite holidays. I couldn’t get out of bed for about two days after that appointment.

Anyway, I’m thinking about this today because LB’s progress has shone. First, he spontaneously said “Hello” to us this morning when he got up. Second, he opened the front door to Tom this afternoon and said “Hello, Tom. How was the cinema?” Tom looked as surprised as I felt. I filled Rosie and Owen in with these happenings this evening.

“You going all posh on us LB?” asked Rosie.

The holiday

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“Hey, LB. (Social care agency) rang today…”
“Yes Mum.”
“They said they’ve got a great holiday you can go on in the Summer. Five days at an activity centre with a few young people.”
“No Mum. I don’t want to go Mum.”
“Ahh.. it will be fab. Loads of fun and activities. You love the holidays you go on with school…”
“Who is it with Mum?”
“(Social care agency).”
“No Mum. I don’t want to go Mum.”
“Why not?”
“It will just be misery Mum. It will just be a bucket of misery Mum.”
“Well, Sue from (social care agency) is coming round in a couple of weeks to tell us some more about it.”
“I don’t want to go Mum. It will be misery, Mum. I just like lorries Mum. Irish lorries Mum.”
“Well, let’s have a bit of a think about it when we meet up with Sue.”
“I don’t want to go Mum.”

LB and The Artist

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Watched The Artist on DVD last night. LB was not too impressed, as you can see below. I’ve illustrated this tale with the most artistic window display I saw for the event that dominated the UK this weekend. Big spotty pants captures it perfectly for me. That’s all I’m saying.

“Mum? Is he [George V] deaf Mum?”
“No. He ain’t deaf.”
“Why won’t he talk Mum?”
“It’s a silent movie LB. There isn’t any talking in it.”
“Why doesn’t he just talk?…. Why.doesn’t.he.just.talk?…”
“Are you enjoying it LB?”
“No Mum. I hate it.”
“Why?”
“It’s so boring Mum.”
“Boring? Why?”
“It’s just.. It’s just SILENT Mum.”

The ‘good life’ and sibling interactions

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Regular followers of this blog (love you all) will know that LB’s future plans (and lack of opportunity, ‘capabilities’, ‘a good life’) are weighing heavily on me at the moment. This is causing me to examine everyday family life closely.

So. I had a meeting in London today then picked up LB from his after school club on the way back. Tom (12) was just home after playing football in the park with his mates. Later in the evening, Tom came downstairs to say goodnight. This is a new development. He no longer expects or wants us to go and say goodnight to him in bed. Half an hour later, LB was sent to bed. After a series of verbal (nudges) orders to “clean teeth, wash face, get pyjamas on” he was ready for bed (and released from our surveillance).

Then I could hear a series of exchanges. Tom was asking LB to turn off his light. This involved various prompts, all cheerful. After an encouraging, responsive exchange, the light was turned off. A further “goodnight” exchange followed. Sorted.

I started comparing Tom’s interactions with LB, with our exchanges with him. Tom, Rosie, William and Owen all talk to or with LB differently to us. As do their mates. They don’t have the baggage of the ‘special needs’ label or of growing up in world in which difference was largely hidden away, influencing their exchanges. They chat. They talk to him as a brother or a friend’s brother.  They negotiate, or adapt their chat, to accommodate LB, but it’s still chat.

I can’t help thinking that we need to learn from their chat, their interactions, their casual yet ready acceptance, if we want to allow or enable dudes like LB to lead ‘a good life’.  It’s just difficult when his whole life is framed within a ‘special needs’ space with alienating structures and processes dominating it.